Stewards of the Flame (32 page)

“Aren’t there ever physical causes?”

“The proximate causes are physical. Neurotransmitters produce physical effects. And these can be relieved chemically. In the Hospital or even in Fleet, you’d have been treated that way at the first sign of symptoms like those you’re now having. Are you sorry not to be offered such relief?”

“Kira, that’s a loaded question. The way you ask it tells me there’s some reason why I shouldn’t be sorry. Some reason besides being willing to pay a price for all I’ve learned here, I mean.”

“The price of mind power is never arbitrary,” Kira said. “To live in peace with it, you must learn to deal with groundless anxiety. There may be . . . recurrent episodes. You may wake in the night, in terror, without knowing why. The episodes will be brief—I’ll teach you how to recover. But you will know, deep down, that the panic may recur.”

“You’re making it sound like a literal bad trip.”

“That’s exactly what it is. The only difference is that it won’t harm you, whereas if it came from a state forced on you by drugs, it could.”

Still sick with fear, shivering, Jesse asked, “Are you trying to warn me to expect evil as well as good from paranormal powers?” It occurred to him that such powers could be turned to what tradition on Earth called black magic, Satanism, or the dark side of the Force.

“What you feel is not evil,” Kira declared. “The evil use of such powers is an all-too-real possibility, but you won’t come up against it within the Group because both Ian and Peter have been very careful not to recruit anybody who’s susceptible. They’ve occasionally had to deal with outsiders—but that’s another story. You have enough to worry about right now without hearing
that.
”

“What’s the aim of putting me through this, then?”

“Think of it as an inoculation,” Kira said. “You are about to move to the city, where neither Peter nor I will be on hand to cope with emergencies, and though Carla can help you, she’s not a trained instructor. There won’t be lab equipment available in any case. Through the use of this equipment, we have opened your mind to the alteration of consciousness. We’ve done it rapidly, intensively, in a mere fraction of the time this process would haven taken if traditional non-drug methods had been used. There are more potential altered states than you’ve imagined, Jesse, and you’re now vulnerable to experiencing some of them spontaneously. If that happens it can be terrifying, and as you are learning now, terror feeds on terror. You need to know how to handle it. You don’t want to end up in the psych ward at a time when Peter doesn’t happen to be there.”

Horrified, Jesse burst out, “Could that happen?”

“It happens frequently—but not to our trained people. We make sure they have experience to protect them.”

“So you’re going to teach me to . . . turn this off?”

“Yes. But not right away, Jesse.” Kira looked at him with compassion. “There’s another kind of protection I have to give you first. The process involves some suffering, but what you’ll gain is worth that. Okay?’

He wondered what would happen if he said it was not okay. But he did trust Kira’s wisdom, and he’d gone along with too much to balk now, so he nodded.

She took him from the lab into the infirmary, where she opened a cabinet and produced a hypodermic. “I’m going to give you something that will make you sick,” she said. “I know you still feel frightened without cause, and that will make this particularly hard to bear. There is no physical antidote. It will not simply wear off. I can of course heal you if necessary, but you need to learn that your own mind is capable of doing so.”

Jesse drew breath. Well, they had done it to him many times in the Hospital and he had survived—but either they
had
used an antidote or it
had
worn off. . . . “What sort of symptoms will I have?” he asked.”

“Nausea and cramps—similar to what you had in the Hospital, but more severe.”

Jesse lay down on the cot. Kira gave him the injection, then left the room. What followed were among the worst hours of his life.

He broke out into a cold sweat when the nausea hit; it was indeed more severe and persistent than it had been in the Hospital. The cramps proved almost unendurable. He found himself unable to stop the pain as he had learned to do—internal pain was somehow harder to manage. Dimly, he perceived that the baseless terror with which he’d begun might have something to do with this. The fact that he was constantly dragging himself to and from the bathroom also interfered with control of his feelings. His terror progressed from being groundless to a specific fear that Kira would leave him alone until he somehow made his mind cure him—which meant she might never come back.

By the time she did return he was so weak he could hardly speak. “Kira . . . I feel like I’m . . . dying. I don’t want to ask for help, but—”

She put a cool hand on his forehead, and he felt her sympathy rush into him, reviving him. “This is a harsh lesson,” she said gently.

“And I’ve failed.”

“No. It will serve its purpose.” She helped him back into the lab, went on dual, showed him a new mind-pattern. He matched it quite quickly, and the sickness faded. “Remember it,” she cautioned. “This isn’t something we’d want to repeat for practice.”

Definitely not, thought Jesse. “Kira—if I’d had this training before I was in the Hospital, could I have thrown off what they gave me?”

“Yes, though you’d have been wise not to reveal that you could.”

“Then . . . I’m in danger of being picked up again. That’s what you’re trying to protect me from.”

“Possibly, though the risk is small. You might also get sick naturally from something like food poisoning. But that’s not the main point of the lesson.” Kira paused, then continued, “Jesse, I didn’t drug you—we don’t believe in drugs, after all. What I injected was distilled water.”

He was not sure he’d heard right. “What made me sick, if not the injection?”

“Your mind made you sick. On ancient Earth, witch doctors killed their enemies with curses. Prisoners told they’d been poisoned sometimes died with the symptoms of poisoning. And people today often get sick merely because the Meds say they’re sick. If informed by a trusted authority that sickness is imminent, then the mind will produce sickness—even yours did.”

“The placebo effect in reverse?”

“Yes. The technical term is ‘nocebo.’”

“And I fell for it,” he said ruefully. “In spite of all you’ve been saying these past weeks.”

“That very fact proves that it’s the mind, not the body, that determines your well-being, doesn’t it? All the training has been aimed toward making you understand this. Just an intellectual understanding’s not enough, though. It needs to be a deep, gut-level understanding.”

“Well,” Jesse said dryly, “gut-level knowledge is what I got, certainly.”

“As we warned you in the beginning, we use drastic methods to break the conditioning people acquire by living in a Med-dominated culture. Have they worked for you? Have you become unconditionally sure that the mind can determine physical responses?”

“Yes,” Jesse declared. “I believe it, Kira.”

“Good. You’ll need to, during the Ritual. Remember it, when the moment comes in which you must defy your deepest instinctive fear.”

He was too tired, and still too shaken by unwarranted fright, to ponder this. It took another hour of work on dual before he managed to absorb the fact that groundless anxiety, like any other fear, would not go away until he was willing for it
not
to go away. Once he’d mastered the knack of not letting it bother him, however, the anxiety lifted. It seemed incredible that he could ever have panicked over nothing. He knew that if it did happen again, he could ride it out.

“Congratulations,” Kira told him, as his spirits began to rise. “You’ve come a long way. Whatever Peter’s motive was for pushing you so fast, his experiment succeeded. I wish you joy with Carla, Jesse. You’ve earned it.”

~
 
34
 
~

The days after Carla returned were idyllic. Jesse had never known so much happiness; every hour with her was joy, but the private ones were beyond description. They moved into one of the cottages—only temporarily theirs, of course, since different people came to the Lodge during different weeks—and spent a good share of their time there. That time brought him more than sensual pleasure. That sex could lead to altered consciousness had been known to many cultures, she told him, and though the goals and symbols of the traditions that had used it that way on Earth weren’t the same as the Group’s, some of the same techniques applied. He wondered, once he’d been shown those techniques, why he’d ever thought mere minutes long enough for lovemaking.

Carla helped him to achieve stronger telepathic rapport than he’d thought possible. It wasn’t only that the two of them became one during physical arousal—that, she said, sometimes happened even to people without paranormal skills. It would have proved the existence of telepathy centuries ago if not for the widespread fear of recognizing such powers. Now free of that fear, Jesse let her teach him to sustain their link, to reach with his mind and receive knowledge from hers. She assured him that once gained, this skill would be lasting and could be used apart from sex, not only with her but with others. “For working as a healer,” she explained, “which you may do later on. But especially for the Ritual, when you’ll draw on power from us all.”

He was not worried about the coming Ritual, despite Kira’s admission that it involved danger. Carla would be with him. She seemed to be looking forward to it. Having found that the Group’s methods always turned out well, he saw no reason to be afraid.

On the morning of the appointed day, Peter took him to the lab for one last check of the abilities in which he’d been trained. It was a grueling session, and although he performed flawlessly, Jesse found himself getting more and more nervous as it progressed. Finally it dawned on him that Peter was causing this, deliberately stirring fears he’d thought were behind him—even to the extent of leading him into the mind-pattern for groundless anxiety.

“Damn it, Peter,” he burst out, “you’re trying to scare me! You can’t do that, you know.”

“I thought not,” Peter agreed, “not this way, anyway. But I had to make sure.” He sat up, pushing back his headpiece, and the dual feedback patterns on the wallscreen blinked off. “If you did not have enough confidence by now to be absolutely unshakable in the use of your skills, I could not let you go through with the Ritual tonight. Yet you must have the impetus of fear to gain the mind power it will demand. So you need to feel some apprehension.”

“And with clever games, you’re setting me up to do so,” Jesse observed.

“I suppose it seems that way. But the danger of failure is real.” Peter reached over and gripped Jesse’s hand. “Jess, from here on things get serious. There will be no more games, and you can be badly hurt if you take this warning too casually.”

“Not telling me what to expect is a game in itself, though, isn’t it?”

“No,” Peter said. “If I described what we’ll do in advance, you would be so afraid that you wouldn’t be able to do it.”

“So you simply . . . test me. The way we began.”

“Not ‘simply,’ but yes, tests are inherent in it, not only of your courage but of your trust in us. You could not do what we’ll ask of you without our telepathic aid—our rapport with each other is the foundation of the Group, and to become one of us you must be willing to rely on it. Furthermore, if your belief in what you pledge is less than unconditional, if you merely pretend to yourself that you believe, both you and others will suffer. But that’s not going to happen.” He smiled reassuringly. “You have been thoroughly prepared to attain the necessary state of consciousness. And it’s an awesome experience, Jess. We’ll all renew our commitment as you make yours, and we’ll get high; but you will start out high and get higher than ever before.”

“Exactly what am I committing myself to?” Jesse asked, realizing that no one had ever been specific about it.

“Nothing you’ve not already decided to do. You’ll pledge to live by the principles we’ve taught you and to support fellow-members, just as they will support you.”

“Is that all?” He had hoped he’d be asked to take on some significant task. He was impatient, now, to see action.

Peter, sensing this thought, hesitated. “That’s all as far as the Ritual is concerned. Before long, Jess, I may ask you for a further commitment. I can’t talk about that yet. If Ian should say anything that implies special plans for you, keep it to yourself, okay?”

“Ian’s coming, then?”

“Yes, thank God. It will be his last Ritual, his last visit to the Lodge—so this is a bittersweet time for us. I hope you’ll forgive us if our joy in your celebration and wedding feast is mixed with sadness.”

That afternoon more people began to arrive on the Island; boats and seaplanes were moored in the bay since there wasn’t room for them all at the dock. Jesse and Carla slipped away and walked along the shore to a secluded cove far from the swimming area. The weather was glorious, the sky a more vivid blue than was usual on Undine, the sun warm. They spread a blanket on the flat rocks, stripped, and made love. “I’m supposed to get you high,” Carla told him. “You have to start out high the first time you go through the Ritual.”

“I thought I was expected to be apprehensive,” he said, “though I don’t think I can be if we do this, Carla.” He was already in high spirits, and she was skilled, he knew, in arousing even better feelings. No thought of danger could touch him; the future seemed cloudless as the sky. Whatever happens next, he thought, there will never be a day to surpass this one.

Later, they stood on a rock by the water, watching the sun drop into the bay and mists begin to rise. Carla was more beautiful than ever in the fading light, he thought, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, her slender body silhouetted against the backdrop of silvered waves. It was a picture he would carry with him forever. They kissed one last time, then headed back to change clothes for the evening’s celebration.